Abstract

The article deals with the problem of human rights in the context Jan Patočka’s philosophy. In philosophical discourse this issue usually emerges as the problem of grounding of human rights in Patočka’s later phenomenology and is closely and legitimately connected to a vision of his political involvement that unites philosophical theory with living practice. This article approaches the problem of human rights from a different perspective and finds reasons why Patočka was not only a proponent of human rights, but also a critique of their potentially decadent forms originating in inauthentic understanding of human freedom. For this reason the article focuses on Patočka’s critique of liberalism.